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Good day today. Not great. Just Pumped 1000L of sap. Finished 7 gallons of syrup. It filtered crystal clear. Really happy with it. Still early season stuff. This is only my third bottling. I am very concerned about the long range forecast. My trees just started to flow and looks like it may shut down next week..Yikes!!
Ditto to that !
Hoping the snow will keep some sap flow events coming. Next week certainly looks hot.
Boiled 106 gallons of sap today. I am just finishing it now. Long day.
I also collected 77.5 gallons, which is my second best collection of the season. The lines were still flowing after I collected, including the one in tapped on December 27.
I would boil tomorrow but it will be a very bad weather day, but it also should be a sap flow day. I see 3 more boils before shutting down on Monday.
So far I have collected 103% of the sap I collected last year and 91% of the sap total including what was given to me.
I still have about a dozen of the 51 trees that haven't started flowing yet. Their base is buried in snow. Hopefully the rain forecasted after this ice crap comes and melts some of the snow around the trees. I also hope the hot weather forecasted doesn't come to end the season before it starts.
Boiled yesterday. I also collected 56 gallons afterwards. I collected 66 gallons today, so I will have 122 gallons to boil Sunday. Sunday should be a great flow day (-7 to +9) and might be the last. There is a chance there might be some flow Monday, but that will be it for the season.
I will boil Monday, which could be the last of the season, unless there are some unexpected flows.
Not bad flow yesterday. Started in earnest later in the afternoon. Yesterday I packed 47 L of crystal clear syrup. Still has early season taste but a little darker than normal. I think today will be the best flow day so far this year. Should have another run tomorrow then it gets hot for the next 5 days at least. I don't think the trees will bud yet. There is still lots of snow on the ground and it is dense with all the rain and freeze here. My trees bud normally about a week after the ice is off the lake out front which is always between April 17-19. Except one year that it hung on until May 2. So who knows?? We might get another run after the warm spell. I haven't made near normal amount of syrup yet. I will take advantage of the warm weather and power wash and bleach the holding tanks. Then they will be ready for the last runs or ready to be put away for the season. Fingers crossed.
Time to finish the second coffee and strap on the snowshoes. Want to inspect the lines while the snow still has a crust on it to catch every drop of today and tomorrow.
I just got back from collecting. I collected 67L today which is more than half of what I collected all of last week. I still have 5 trees that have not flowed yet. 2 trees are giving me a brown sap that stinks so I've been dumping that.
I boiled yesterday and saw a sugar content increase, it was 42.8:1 ratio compared to my first boil of 47:1 ratio.
The flow today is amazing, almost seems strange it will totally stop flowing tomorrow. I have only collected from a few pails today, I still have more pails and the three barrels to go. I suspect I should have 70+ gallons to boil for my final day.
I am boiling now. I am just a few minutes away from putting the last of my 122 gallons in the 35 gallon head tank. This will be my all time largest single day boil. I might add more from today we will see.
I am all finished collecting and I am pulling some taps. I am boiling 131 gallons today. I did end up with more sap than last year and will end up with more syrup. I credit an early start and more taps to that success.
I have to admit I am pooped after a long day yesterday and I am glad the season is ending. Today will be another long day. After that I can clean and pull taps on a slower schedule.
The sap flow really slowed down today. I hope the trees don't start budding before the cooler weather next week.